Once upon a time there was a storyteller with three sons. She wrote about them, and many readers in the land praised her work. The boys’ ridiculous antics made the townspeople slap their knees, and their stories spread far and…well maybe just a little ways away…

The storyteller eventually moved to the land of Full Time Job where she thought she was exhausting all of her creative energy, and that must be why she stopped telling tales of her boys. But then, there came a day when the real reason revealed itself in a disguised message, delivered from the nearby town of Facebookland. On the surface it was indeed an interesting exchange, but between the words came another voice: “It is time to do another brave thing: It is time to tell your whole story, and spread your truth far and maybe wide this time. This is why your writing has stopped until today.”

So the storyteller opened up and shared her whole story and sold lots of books and became a successful writer. The end.

I hope you liked my totally true tale of the storyteller who is actually me. Yeah, it’s all true…it’s just that that ending part isn’t true YET.

If you’re just joining us, I started this blog about my three boys in April of 2014. Tuna is now 13, Binker is 8, and Squishy is almost 6. I’ve shared a lot, but skated around the whole truth: I am a special needs mom.

It’s time to include that part of my story. It’s time to talk about it. So, just as I jumped in and wrote one of my first entries about floor food, here goes: Tuna is gifted, has Tourrette’s Syndrome, ADHD, and food allergies. Binker is autistic, has ADHD, and is gifted. Squishy is autistic and we suspect giftedness. These diagnoses make myself and Latefordinner special needs parents.

There. Done.

I have my dear friend to thank for unknowingly jump-starting my blog again, and showing me it’s time to come out.

I’ve chosen to keep writing here, rather than starting a new blog, because I want you to understand why I stayed in the special needs parenting closet–those of you with neurotypical children may have related to the chaos when you read my stories. However, the differences in special needs families add several layers of challenges that I left out of those stories. The wonderful news is that neurotypical families canrelate to our stories! We really are “normal” (because no one is normal, so we’re all normal), so there are tons of things we all have in common. Whew! That’s comforting for special needs families. My charge now is to talk about those unspoken layers. It’s time to pull them out of the closet, dust them off, and show you how they fit if you’ve never worn them. And if you do wear them, maybe we’re matchy!

I hope you’ll stick around for some knee-slapping, eye-opening, ignorance-squashing stories–Because Boys 2.0: Special Needs Edition. AKA “God Doesn’t Give You More Than You Can Handle”, and “You’re Their Mom For a Reason”. Also, “I Don’t Know How You Do It.”

I made a new friend in one of my classes. She’s around my age, and we have some things in common, so I did the “hey, let’s connect on social media” thing. We walked out of class, talked for a few minutes, and then got to talking about having coffee after class one day. But I had to get going because Latefordinner had to take Tuna to one of his things. I had to hurry home to be home with the littles. She asked me if I had ever been to this place in town, or this other place…she had to go shopping there, and go eat over there. Shopping? At a little place? You mean somewhere other than Costco or Target? Wouldn’t that other place be Amazon?

You see, this new friend who is around my age and also in college, doesn’t have children.

She said, “You’ve never been there?!”

“No, I have no life”, I said with a smile.

We laughed, and I found myself floating away from this new friend in front of me. We do actually have things in common–we feed off of each other in class discussions, and we both lean toward holistic practices, plus there’s the age thing. Age…it really is nothing. Her laughter was coming from a very different place of understanding, in which someone my age actually did have a “life”, and was not a mother. I wonder why she laughed, actually. Probably just because I did. Politeness. She’s nice, so I’m sure she didn’t actually think anything of it. But of course I did.

We separated, and I had that unsettled feeling, hearing the echo of myself saying “I have no life” in my head.

It was such a quick realization this time. No pondering the depths, just hearing the echo come back saying:

“You have SUCH A LIFE!”

And it’s true! My life is FULL, and RICH. Not with the freedom to shop in little shops, or eat out all the time; but with my full, rich family. My family gives me SUCH a life. My life is enriching and busy and chaotic and messy and scary and exciting and boring and breathtaking. My life is a roller coaster of exhilaration and fear and love and boys and marriage and school. My life is PACKED with NEWNESS every day, jammed with sameness, overflowing with opportunities to grow and thrive and teach and learn. Every. Single. Day. of my life is SUCH A DAY.

Psh, no life. Why did I even say that? What a thing to say. I don’t have time to have no life. That is the stuff of midlife crises. There is no crisis when every age is SUCH an age. Every life we live within this one is exactly what it should be. There is no need to call motherhood and marriage and college less than life, because it is exactly what completes me now. Accepting SUCH a life is crisis-prevention.

Try it: Tell yourself you have no life. If you don’t hear that echo back, YELL IT BACK. Every one of you has SUCH a life.